Intuition, to an outsider, is often regarded with either reverence or skepticism when it is wielded by a character in a story – like the detective in so many movies and books. However, how that character gets to that conclusion is often a mystery and is often chalked up to “gut instinct.”
Most of the time, intuition is not derived from nothing but is actually pulled from a vast resource of facts, training and prior experience, which leads the character to a well-informed conclusion.
For Military Intelligence Soldiers, their informed “intuition” is a methodical collection of facts transformed into understanding.
One of the key processes an MI Soldier wields to transform information and knowledge into understanding is “Intelligence preparation of the operational environment,” or IPOE.
“IPOE is one of the key tasks every Soldier in the intelligence field needs to understand, and Soldiers need to dedicate a majority of their time practicing that skill,” Chief Warrant Officer April Bocasan, all source intelligence technician for 7th Infantry Division said. “It is mostly research to assist the rest of the staff, and the commander to make informed decisions that will affect the mission outcome.”
IPOE incorporates intelligence gathered and available information like weather and terrain, road networks, and prior behavior of enemy combatants which is then overlayed together over the unit’s area of operations. This overlay then presents the variables a commander and staff must consider when deciding on a course of action to accomplish the unit’s mission.
This crucial skill, although taught to MI Soldiers during initial training, is a skill that can easily wane without practice. To maintain and hone the ability to conduct IPOE, MI Soldiers from 7ID designed and implemented an IPOE Academy. The five-day event was held as part of a bigger Army initiative to incorporate training for MI Soldiers at battalion and brigade level. More than 20 Soldiers from the 16 Battalion intelligence teams attended this iteration of the academy focusing on training the processes of IPOE.
“We provided the Soldiers the answer to ‘why do we do IPOE?’” said Sgt. 1st Class Nathan Thompson, senior intelligence sergeant for 7ID and one of the instructors of the course. “We do IPOE to make better decisions – it’s to inform the commander and the staff so we can, collectively, make an informed choice and take the best course of action.”
“You're using everything you know in the background to create the picture of the battle space. And then you're telling the commander, ‘Why does this picture matter to me?’” Bocasan said. “The why is important because the commander, while they do have the knowledge and the experience and they can oversee a lot of things, they don't have time to do the analysis and all the back work that goes into it. We don’t need to feed them with all the data points – we need to provide them with the ‘so what.’”
Throughout the IPOE process, the information is refined, overlayed on maps, and processed into defined and digestible products for commanders and staff. The whole process, outlined in MI doctrine, transforms data to information, information to knowledge, and knowledge to understanding.
If someone were on the outside looking in, they might see the final product as MI Soldiers flexing intuition rather than the application of doctrine and skill.
“It might seem like magic, but if you get the steps wrong, or if you don't evaluate the source – you can just get it wrong,” said 2nd Lt. Cooper Klein, intelligence plans officer for 16th Combat Aviation Brigade, 7ID, and a student at the latest 7ID IPOE Academy. “You have to practice the process of taking raw data and then assess where that information is from and how reliable it is. what time was it given?’ Then you put it on a map and communicate that to a commander.”
Getting complacent or not practicing a perishable skill can have cascading effects. Dotted throughout historical texts and topping many “top-10” videos about military blunders are moments when the information was collected or interpreted incorrectly, or a boastful leader didn’t trust their intelligence team’s analysis.
Klein, who attended the course with two MI Soldiers from his shop, valued the inclusion of his Soldiers in the IPOE training. Outside of the training, doing day-to-day tasks, it was challenging to find time to conduct the training together, he said.
“The IPOE academy allowed my team at 16th CAB to practice IPOE as a team. I initially learned IPOE with a bunch of other lieutenants during the Basic Officer Leader Course, so you’re in a kind of bubble. The academy applied IPOE specific to 16th CAB, and we briefed our intelligence and security section leader.”
For Bocasan, the operational mindset adjustment from the Global War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan to possible future fights is something worth incorporating into the course.
“There are different threats that we face today, like technological advances and new weapon systems,” Bocasan said. “That’s what makes this job hard: you constantly have to change, and you constantly have to be aware of new potential threats and the changing battlefield. You can miss something huge, which is what we're trying to address with this academy, so Soldiers don’t miss something big.”
With the success of the first iteration completed and plans to incorporate more MI Soldiers for the next Academy in August, Soldiers who attended the course were happy with the results and eager to participate in additional classes.
“I'm an advocate for getting repetitions of IPOE in with the team,” Klein said. “When I initially heard we were doing this, my first thought was, ‘How is this going to be different than the Basic Officer Leader Course?’ But going through the course, I realized there's nothing that really can substitute getting in repetitions with the specific team you'll be working with. There's no substitution for just getting real applied repetitions.”
Transforming the fighting force and increasing lethality of our combat forces starts with the individual Soldier and their applied understanding of their knowledge and skills. The 7th ID IPOE Academy ensures MI Soldiers at brigades and battalions of the 7th Infantry Division not only know how but also know why IPOE is essential. With this training, they can provide their commanders with the best-informed intuition when it matters most.
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